Homosexual Marriage at the Dusk of Liberty

In the long run, Christians won't be prosecuted for objecting to homosexual marriage as such. They will be prosecuted for denying that the State has the power to define what is morally licit under the legal rubric of civil rights. We are one step closer to the catacombs. Bishops, priests and deacons need to take special note because they will become the first targets of the coming hostility in order to demoralize the faithful. Clergy who today still hope for compromise with the homosexual cultural agenda must recommit to the moral tradition and bear the scorn that comes with defending it.

P>NAPLES, FL. (Catholic Online) -To define homosexual coupling as marriage violates natural law. It takes one male and one female to create a child and constitute a family. A male-to-male or female-to-female coupling is naturally sterile; biologically closed to the creation of new life. A homosexual "family" then, is necessarily an artificial creation.

Marriage is not a creation of the State; it predates the rise of the State. When the State codifies heterosexual marriage, it simply affirms what already exists in nature. However, when the State decrees that a homosexual coupling is a morally licit marriage, it arrogates unto itself an authority to define human relationships that do not exist in nature and thus violates natural law.

The State codification of same-sex couplings as a marriage means that moral relativism is being crafted into law. This creates a new conflict. A society cannot live with the tension between the State and nature and thus is left with two available choices: 1) deny the arrogation of authority by the State, or 2) destroy the definition of natural marriage altogether.

The first is the choice of anyone who believes that the moral tradition and/or natural law references an authority higher than the State. The second will be favored by those who see the State as both the source and judge of morally licit human relationships.

President Obama has declared that "gay rights" is a centerpiece of his second term agenda. This is a dangerous development. The arrogation of authority by the State to define what kind of relationships are morally licit as well as the employment of the machinery of the State to enforce the polices that flow from it will justify an encroachment into personal life seldom seen in human history.

Furthermore, the ground is being tilled for the persecution of Christianity because Christians, by the mere fact that they believe in God, testify allegiance to an authority to which even the State must be subject. The State will necessarily refuse that reasoning because it strikes at the heart of its arrogation of moral authority (see my essay: The Artist as Vandal: Culture and the Desecration of Religious Symbols).

In the long run, Christians won't be prosecuted for objecting to homosexual marriage as such. They will be prosecuted for denying that the State has the power to define what is morally licit under the legal rubric of civil rights. The drafters of the Manhattan Declaration understand this. Christian history confirms it.

We are one step closer to the catacombs. Bishops, priests and deacons need to take special note because they will become the first targets of the coming hostility in order to demoralize the faithful. Clergy who today still hope for compromise with the homosexual cultural agenda must recommit to the moral tradition and bear the scorn that comes with defending it.

If they don't, they will fall from the faith and lead others with them. Clergy who are practicing homosexuals need to be removed from office because their internal confusion fosters greater moral confusion in the Church at a time when more moral clarity is needed.

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Fr. Johannes L. Jacobse is an Orthodox priest serving in Naples, FL. He is President of the American Orthodox Institute and blogs at www.aoiusa.org/blog. This article first appeared in The Observer, the American Orthodox Institute Blog, entitled The Colloquium and Pope Francis  and is used with permission.

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